Quake Live is No Longer a Free-To-Play

After five-plus years of providing gamers with free-to-play access to all sorts of intense online first-person shooter action, id Software has decided to end the game’s old business model and no longer make it free-to-play. If gamers want to annihilate opponents with blasts from their lightning guns, they will have to buy Quake Live on Steam for $9.99.

While not too many gamers are pleased with Quake Live’s abandonment of the free-to-play model, the move to Steam does have its perks such as Steam Workshop support for custom user-made mods.

The developers said via Steam community thread, “By our retiring our services and subscription service, all players now have the same benefits and features in-game. All players can participate in map voting processes, have full access to customize their game to the same degree as others, and have the ability to run their own Listen Servers and configure their matches to their own liking.”

What’s really drawing the ire of gamers is that some people purchased Pro subscriptions to Quake Live only to find that they have literally thrown money away as the premium features are irrelevant in the Steam version.

The biggest complaint, however, is that the people playing Quake Live were not consulted. Had they been notified beforehand that the game was going to become pay-to-own, they wouldn’t have purchased premium content while using its free-to-play model. After all, the money they spent on free-to-play premium content could have gone to paying the $9.99 to own the game.

Despite the complaints, the Quake Live available on Steam right now does contain more than 4,500 different fixes to the game’s maps, as well as a completely overhauled user interface and all new in-game settings.

It’s bizarre that a game has decided to rid itself of a free-to-play model. Usually, a game stars off premium and then starts including pay-to-win features or cash shop microtransactions.

Regardless of how you feel about the change in business model, if you want to annihilate enemies with a lightning gun, you can only do so for $9.99 through Steam. No amount of griping is going to change that.